“I told you, I don’t have any.”
One more month until I’m out of here.
That was the timeline I was giving myself. I didn’t care what I had to do, even if that meant couch surfing,but I was out.
“And I know you’re fucking lying to me!”
My back lowered down the door until I was seated, and I set my bag next to me, my hand slipping into my apron. The feel of the twenty almost singed my fingertips. A tip a resident had given me since it was his last day at the facility.
If I gave it to Dean, he’d stop harassing me, but then he’d reprimand me for lying.
There was no winning.
I pulled my hand out of my pocket and rocked my head against the door. “Leave me alone! I don’t have anything to give you.”
“You’re a real piece of shit—you know that?! No wonder your mother doesn’t love you.” He gave the door one more punch, and the hallway turned silent.
I wouldn’t let my eyes tear.
I wouldn’t let my chin quiver.
I wouldn’t let my chest get heavy.
Nothing he said mattered.
All tonight did was push me further away from here.
Away from them.
And in one month, I’d never see him again. As long as my mother stayed married to him and buried in an alcohol haze, I wouldn’t see her either.
I took the twenty out of my pocket and stared at the edges of the bill. If I drove to visit my best friend, I wouldn’t have to spend any of this. She was a bartender. She wouldn’t let me pay for whatever I ordered off the menu, and she’d refill my Coke glass until my stomach couldn’t take any more carbonation. I could then crash at her place for the next two nights, until I had to go back to work.
But she lived an hour away. For some reason—one I didn’t understand—that just felt too far.
If I left to get food, Dean would ask where I was going,when I was coming home. When I returned, he’d ask where I’d been and, if he smelled food on me, where I’d gotten the money.
Under this roof, I wasn’t treated like a twenty-three-year-old.
But I needed to eat. I shouldn’t have gone this long without putting something in my body. I definitely couldn’t go all night without at least a snack.
What the hell am I going to do?
My cell vibrated from inside my apron, and I pulled it out. There was a notification on the screen from Hooked—an app I hadn’t used in at least a year. I didn’t even know it was still installed on my phone.
The night I’d downloaded it was an evening similar to tonight, but Dean had thrown the cigarette at me instead of taking drags from it, and there was even more shouting and accusations and mayhem.
What resulted from that spontaneous meetup was just the kind of mental escape I’d needed.
But that evening, when I’d signed up for Hooked, I’d chosen their free service rather than their paid subscription, so I didn’t get daily notifications. That was why I was surprised that this one had come through.
You’ve been Hooked.
As I reread the app’s message, I clicked on it, and the next screen told me I had been one hundred percent matched with someone—a percent that sounded almost impossible.
I followed the prompts and was taken to a photo of a man. An epically sexy man with black hair and green eyes and not a bushy beard, but the kind of facial hair that told me there were more important things in his life than shaving. Underneath hispicture was an alert that there was a message in my inbox. One I assumed was from him.
Do I care enough to read it?
